


Rubatosis

by somegunemojis



Series: Blood Royal [6]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, I won't be shamed for loving these bad husbands, Kidnapping, M/M, Rescue, Slow Burn, Team Ro, Torture, Trans Hatake Kakashi, Unreliable Narrator, oh my god the subtext, oh yeah also, probably more characters and tags to be added but we will see, they literally don't get together in this fic that's how slow burn it is but the SUBTEXT, they'll smooch in the next one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:00:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26344519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somegunemojis/pseuds/somegunemojis
Summary: rubatosis: (uncountable) The unsettling awareness of one's own heartbeat.He's nineteen when he takes that mission. A lapse in attention changes the course of his life forever.For better, and probably for worse too.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Yamato | Tenzou, Hatake Kakashi/Momochi Zabuza
Series: Blood Royal [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1945084
Comments: 14
Kudos: 76





	1. Razorwire

**Author's Note:**

> This one's for Noah, who is an angel. And laughed when I pitched this, so also an enabler. 
> 
> Also this was alternately titled "the kakazabu fic idea that tortures me at night", lmao. It's about the power of being two assholes in love.

They take him down some time in the night. 

The sky is clouded and the moon has waned to its smallest crescent and he’s using the lack of good light to his advantage, running them in endless loops and circles while the rest of his team hustles to deliver the package to Takigakure. It’s been hours since they split, he thinks; with shadow clones and most of his pack following him and leaving the obvious trail while Lion pulls the others along with Uhei further south towards the border of Mushroom and Fire. He’d led nine or ten of them further north toward Earth, and then doubled back west, and then east again, over and over. Surely by now they’ve caught on to the fact that he’s alone-- he’d dropped the shadow clones and their henges and dispelled the summons, trying to conserve chakra until he either loses them or the team turns back around to meet up with him once the delivery is complete-- but still they follow, probably hoping to wear him down and pick over his corpse, or try and find out why they’d been running so close to the border of the Land of Earth. He’s fairly confident that won’t happen. 

The Hound is known well for his speed and cunning, after all. 

But with the light so dim there’s nothing to glint off the razor wire strung among the branches, and naturally he sprints right into the heart of the trap and ends up hopelessly tangled in the metal strands before his brain can even process the fact that he’s no longer moving. _Well,_ he thinks to himself philosophically, _at least my armor kept it from cutting me into pieces._

With every move he makes, the wires tighten. They bite into his armor and clothes and his skin, tangled around his torso and arms and legs and his throat-- scraping against the wood of the mask. Blood wells up under the wire and drips to the ground before he finally forces himself to still, suspended in the air like an insect in a spider’s web, breathing raggedly and listening to the groan of the wire supporting his weight. The wind rustles the tree branches where they’re anchored and they choke a strangled noise out of him, forcing his breath shallower and shallower. The Hound is unsure of how long he hangs there because he forces himself to go somewhere else, but he eventually hears-smells-senses their group settle into the trees around him. 

He remains still, even as three of them laugh and pluck at the strings until they bite further into his wrist, his ankle, his hip. Teeth bared in a silent snarl, he lights up the wires with enough lightning to kill an elephant, and makes a triumphant noise when the three of them drop to the ground-- dead, hopefully-- though the effort leaves him trembling where he hangs. One of them, presumably the ringleader, curses loudly and orders some of the others to get him down and knock him out. They advance, careful not to touch any of the wire, just as the clouds clear from the dim light of the moon. It glints off the bloodied biting strings and their headbands, enough for him to see: the symbol of Iwagakure, scratched out with a single long line. He thrashes and wheezes as the wire tightens, and then a needle sinks into his neck and for a while he knows nothing more.


	2. Pitch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Killing a hater and meeting your new roommate in ninja jail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> would you guys be mad if i made the summary of every chapter "zabuza, kill these fools"?

He comes to with a jerk and a ragged breath, muscles feeling like they’d been pounded paper-thin by a hammer and anvil, just long enough to jerk himself free of the hold the man carrying has on him. Landing heavily on the hard dirt ground--red clay, grey stone, he’s further into the Land of Earth than he’d like to be-- knocks the breath from him with a wheeze and he’s been disarmed but he is a weapon too and his foot lashes out on instinct and connects with the tall stranger’s ankle, and when the man crashes to the ground The Hound takes a kunai from his holster and slits his throat with it. The blood splashes against his wooden mask and he takes a moment to wonder why they hadn’t taken it off, still a little confused as the drugs they’d given him at first wear off slowly. 

There’s someone behind him, and he lurches forward but it’s not fast enough, and he feels the sting of another needle. Unconsciousness doesn’t greet him this time-- no, it’s far worse than that. His limbs fill with a kind of creeping lassitude that leaves him breathless, until the only parts of him he can force to move are his eyes and the very tips of his fingers. They curse at him and kick him in the ribs and drag him away by the wrists, leaving their fallen comrade where he’d been slain. His head falls back and he watches the sky past his new beast of burden’s spine and shoulders. The sun is coming up now, he was out for maybe six or so hours. 

Or days. He would rather prefer it if it wasn’t days. 

He can tell they’re approaching something-- the missing nin pick up the pace, excitedly talking among themselves about how nice it will be to offload him and make him someone else’s problem, to take the sandals off their aching feet and sit down for a hot meal. They drag him in through the mouth of a cave, mostly natural, though as they go deeper he can spot some tunnels carved out of the rock, clearly made by human hands. There are others here, enough that he can’t tell exactly how many, and it is in the torchlit chambers that they finally drop him. He can’t move, not in any way that would help him, and with so many enemies around it would be suicide to try and kill them all right here and now. 

“Take off the mask” filters into his thoughts, and if he could have tensed he might have-- as it is, he has to settle with flicking his gaze to the one he’d considered the squad leader on the way in, looking a little nervous as he approaches his prone form. The Hound takes a vicious sort of satisfaction in this, even as he realizes that once the mask is gone they will know he has the sharingan, they will know and they will cut it out of his head, and that _cannot_ happen. 

So he thinks very hard for a moment about two normal eyes, dark-grey, unremarkable. He thinks about the gazes of others unable to truly settle any higher than his nose, and right as the man reaches for the painted wood of his mask and drags it away he opens his left eye and lets the sharingan breathe life into the genjutsu, holding his breath and darting his gaze around the room, desperate for his plan to work even as he feels the strain of draining his already low reserves. They pull off the cloth mask next, and Hatake Kakashi’s lips twitch into a weak, half-hearted snarl-- the most he can manage. The shinobi around him jeer, and that same voice rings out from behind him and says dismissively, “Drag him down to the cells, we’ll deal with him later.” 

And drag him they do, further into their little cave system. A right turn, then a left, and then another right like they’re in a den of rabbits. Down some poorly carved stairs where the light of the torches above barely touch the door they reach, and when the man pushes the heavy wood from their path the room beyond lingers like a gaping, pitch-dark mouth ready to swallow him whole. His current captor rolls him onto his stomach and strips him to his sleeveless undershirt and his pants and then ties his arms behind his back carefully, each finger curled into his palm and his wrists tied so his palms can’t touch-- no hand signs for him, he supposes. With that done they pull him into the dim room, tossing him carelessly on his side in a cell and pulling the bars closed. The heavy wooden door closes next, taking all light with it. 

Cold seeps from the rock into his skin, making his joints ache fiercely. For a few moments he can only hear his own ragged breathing, but he closes his eyes and tries to focus-- the smell of blood and death is too pungent in here for him to get anything reliable, but his hearing earns him the faint sound of water dripping somewhere in a corner. The room can’t be that big. And then from across the aisle, something else: somebody else’s steady breathing. He holds his own breath for a moment and curses the fact that he still can’t force himself to move. A raspy chuckle meets his ears in the sudden absence of his own harsh breath, and then a disappointed sigh when Kakashi seemingly has nothing to offer. 

“What, nothing to say?” The voice that rolls out of the stranger-- fellow prisoner?-- is harsh, accent from somewhere east. The Land of Water, maybe? Kakashi can only force out a muffled, frustrated grunt, and that seems to startle another sardonic laugh out of the individual. “Wow, did they gag you? You must have been pretty fucking irritating.” Silence grows between them once more, and Kakashi tries to keep his breathing even, and quieter. With a quiet groan the stranger across from him settles back into his own cage in silence once more, and they wait. 

It’s hard to tell how much time passes with no light, and an indeterminate amount of drugs in his system. He twitches uselessly for what must be a good hour before he can finally force himself to truly move, and from there it’s a struggle to get himself sitting upright and scoot himself closer to the bars of his cell. His new companion listens to him thrash without further comment, but considering their situation Kakashi is… well, curious could be a word for it. Determined to escape is another way to put it, and he certainly has very little chance of doing it alone. That’s probably what drives him to madness enough to lick his lips and hoarsely murmur, “Are you awake?”

Across the aisle, he hears the other prisoner sit up slowly, and suspiciously respond, “So you do talk. Thought maybe they’d cut out your tongue.” 

Rolling his eye makes his skull throb, and it’s not like there’s enough light to see and appreciate the gesture, but it makes him feel better. His response is dry in a way that has very little to do with how thirsty he is. “You’re not that lucky.” Questions bubble in his throat, but he starts simple with, “You got a name?” 

Another scoff is his only answer for a moment, before he hears the stranger shuffle even closer. There’s something heavy in the air, weighted like a physical presence, and it makes Kakashi’s heart race and the hair on his arms stand on end even when the answer comes: “Zabuza.” A pause. Kakashi wishes there was light, but he doesn’t dare risk peeling open the sharingan eye and wasting his chakra, let alone letting the glow give him away. “It’s rude to ask without giving your own, you know.” 

Ah-- so however long he’s spent here, he still has enough spirit to be… curious? Kind of a sarcastic dick? That bodes well, he supposes. “Kakashi.” Zabuza snorts, and chagrined he continues, “Alright _Zabuza,_ do you know how long you’ve been here?” 

A thoughtful noise, then: “I’ll tell you if you can tell me what day it is-- or was, when you were caught.” 

That doesn’t bode well. “The seventh of August,” he replies, just a little subdued at the thought. If it’s that hard to tell time here, or if Zabuza has been here that long, either abandoned or with none to notice he was gone in the first place. Kakashi isn’t like that. His team will circle back and pick up the trail eventually-- he’d been bleeding an awful lot. It won’t be hard to find him. 

Zabuza lets out a quiet ‘huh’, and then there’s a scuffle where he may be shuffling his weight. “About a month then. How’d you get caught.” His voice is flat, like he doesn’t care one way or another whether Kakashi answers him. 

Whatever. An exchange of information won’t hurt anyone. The guy’s been here for a month, apparently, he’s probably just glad to have company that isn’t an enemy or his own thoughts. “It’s almost the new moon, and cloudy. I’d been leading some of them in circles for a while and...” His voice turns the faintest bit chagrined. “They’d strung wire in the trees. Didn’t notice it until too late.” 

Zabuza has the decency not to outright laugh at him, at least, even if he sounds like an asshole when he lowers his voice and gets that mocking, commiserating tone. “Aw-- cut you up pretty good, did they?”

“Yes, but somehow I imagine I’ll live long enough for them to regret it,” he drawls in response, allowing himself a moment to get lost in their banter. He’s pretty sure he’s not bleeding all over the place anymore, though it’s likely that if he doesn’t clean his injuries soon they will get infected. “Do they have any consistent schedule?” 

Tension thickens in the air, and though it’s too dark to see he’s certain that Zabuza has every sense available trained on him, curious, wary, alert. “Not really. Best I can figure is they bring water down every two days or so, and food less often. Sometimes they drag me to another room and try to cut little chunks off of me for information I’m not inclined to give.” The news is good and bad: Zabuza cares enough to notice and remember, even if they try to be rather unpredictable. His voice is hard, almost angry when he continues: “You think you can escape? I’ve tried.” 

Kakashi is quiet for a moment, before diplomatically trying, “I think two heads are better than one--”

“Oh, you want to _work together_ to escape.” Zabuza’s voice is almost waspish, condescending now that he thinks he’s pegged Kakashi for an overly optimistic idiot. “That’s cute. Do you want to hold hands while we do it?” 

He’s-- he’s tired. His body hurts, and sitting in the dark underground in a cage with his arms tied behind his back so tightly that his fingers are numb makes something restless and cruel howl within him. He wants to cut himself free and he wants to raze this place to the ground and really, he’d like to kick this snide asshole in the head while he’s at it. “If you’re scared of the dark, sure.” Kakashi’s voice is little more than an irritated snarl. “Do you have enough fingers left to hold hands with me?”

Another pause. Flexing his own fingers against their bindings and trying to control his breathing and his pounding heart help him pass the time while Zabuza sits in the dark on the other side of the aisle and presumably ponders his offer. He sounds terribly amused when he finally deigns to respond, “don’t worry about the state of my hands, I heal fast enough.” Kakashi’s eye hasn’t adjusted because there’s no light to see by, but still he swears he can see a figure shifting in the shadows. “Fine, _Kakashi,_ we’ll try to escape together. But when we fuck it up, I’m telling them it was your idea.” 

“I am a troublemaker at heart,” is his unamused response. “The longer it takes for us to try the harder it will be, so Zabuza-- I know you’ve been paying attention. Tell me everything.” 

And so he does.


	3. Valerian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's being prepared for anything, and then there's... whatever this ends up being.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> huge content warning for violence and injury, and also vague drugging

Conversation had kind of died down, once Zabuza had explained how bad things really were-- not hopeless, but it certainly wasn’t good. Kakashi had muttered something about needing to think about it and set to work on his bindings. Irregular patrols, drugged food and water, intermittent torture. They’d captured Zabuza a month ago and they still _brought him out to play with him_ as he’d called it, despite the fact that his intel was likely no longer immediately relevant. Sadists, then. The thought isn’t without anger-- at the senseless cruelty, and also at himself for slipping enough to get caught. Zabuza estimated their numbers at about twenty five to thirty, and confessed to killing five of them throughout his stay here. He’d laughed that low, bitter rasp when Kakashi had told him he’d killed four and said, “on your first night? Your stay isn’t going to be a pleasant one.” Kakashi didn’t have much to say to that truth. 

Less than thirty combatants, maybe even less than twenty. If he was with Shisui, Tenzo, Itachi or Gai or even Genma instead of a stranger, he might give them fifty/fifty odds of survival upon a breakout. Zabuza has been here a month, and though he says he can still fight he’d also admitted he isn’t at full strength-- and who would be? Weeks of intermittent starvation and dehydration and drugging and torture don’t exactly make an ideal environment for getting in a good workout or having energy to spend. Kakashi himself is already low on both chakra and blood, and willing the drugs out of his system hasn’t exactly sped up his brain function. If he keeps running the genjutsu to hide his eye, the chakra situation is unlikely to solve itself anytime soon. He’d say giving them a twenty percent chance was generous.

It isn’t hopeless. He has to believe that. But if he doesn’t get out in a week, he’ll just make them kill him-- after putting out the eye. 

Under other circumstances it might be shameful that it takes him approximately three hours to untie himself. Time is hard to keep track of without light, and the lingering cloudiness in his mind, but he tries his best to measure his breathing and count the minutes that way, tensing and relaxing his arms until the ropes are loose enough for him to struggle out of. It scrapes the skin off his hands and wrists, agitates some of the stinging wire cuts, but he manages it eventually. His fingers tremble while he tries to rub feeling back into them and he settles himself with his shoulder pressed against the cold bars, listening to his fellow prisoner breathe. 

“Zabuza--” he starts roughly, not really sure what he’s even going to say, but he’s cut off by the muffled sound of steps on the stone stairs outside the door. He doesn’t hear so much as he _feels_ both of them still, the instinct of a predator lying in wait. The door swings open and light pours in; he has to look away from the torch their captor carries, it leaves white spots dancing in his vision. Glancing across the aisle reveals the other prisoner, striped in shadow though he is. 

Kakashi takes in the details swiftly-- the other man is probably around his own age, brown hair, ashen-tanned skin, strong forehead and nose. Built thicker, even as he’s probably slimmed down quite a bit in captivity. A vicious looking black eye that spreads down his cheekbone and leads his gaze to a mouth. A mouth full of razor teeth, one that grins when Zabuza sees that Kakashi is looking, like he might be afraid of what are essentially just sharp bits of bone. Kakashi just raises his eyebrow and turns his steady gaze to the man with the torch. 

The man stares back at him, colorless eyes picking up the hues of the torch, and to both of them he orders, “get back from the bars if you want water.” He sounds almost bored, but he isn’t fool enough to get within arms reach of them. Kakashi wonders just how many necks of theirs Zabuza had snapped before they’d gotten smart. Glancing back at the other cell he sees Zabuza stand and take a step back, hands up, still with that menacing grin baring his too-many too-sharp teeth. Kakashi cautiously follows his lead, wincing and swaying a bit as the motion both tugs on his scabbed injuries and makes him lightheaded. The man with the torch settles a bowl outside of Zabuza’s cell and nudges it closer with his toes, and then does the same with Kakashi. As he walks back to the door he carries the torch with him, so Kakashi limps back to the bars and pulls his bowl closer, watching as Zabuza stares openly at him. He brings a hand up to his face almost self-consciously before forcing it back into his lap just as the door slams shut once more and shrouds them in total darkness. Footsteps fade and then it’s just the sound of the two of them breathing for a moment.

Zabuza breaks the silence with a bemused, “you look like shit. Is all that blood yours?” 

Kakashi lifts the bowl to his face with a dry huff. “Probably not all of it, no,” though a majority of it most likely is. He sniffs at the water, and -- yes, that’s definitely drugged. Valerian root, passionflower… and kava, he thinks, plus something unidentifiable. Chemical in nature. Sedatives, but not necessarily the kind that knocks them unconscious. He washes his mouth out with it, takes a few sips, and tries his best to clean the blood from his neck and arms with the rest of it. Zabuza falls back into silence. 

“They’ll take you up the stairs soon,” he says a few minutes later. His voice is totally flat, like he doesn’t give a shit one way or another. He probably doesn’t.

Kakashi sighs philosophically and replies, “Then I’ll either come back or I won’t, I suppose.” He’ll escape or die or get brought right back down here to sit in this cell in the dark. He misses the sky and the sound of trees already-- the dripping water in the corner is maddening. “I don’t see sense in worrying too much about it, you know?” 

Zabuza just grunts.

He must have actually fallen asleep, because it’s disorienting to suddenly hear multiple sets of footsteps on the stairs and he struggles to sit up even as he catches Zabuza quiet his own breathing, going back into that predatory stillness like a snake about to lunge, and the door swings open to reveal two men with torches and two with ropes. They’re chattering absently amongst each other and it’s hard to focus on the conversation but he cracks open the sharingan eye and tries not to wince at the flood of information and the strain. Zabuza squints at him from the shadows across the aisle and he stares back evenly, a hint of teeth peeking out from under his own lip. 

They completely ignore Zabuza, turning instead to the new plaything and jeering at him while he watches their shadows dance on the floor. They open up the cell door and march inside, the two without torches restraining his arms and wrenching his shoulders until he has to bite back a snarl and forcing him to kneel. One of the remaining men crouches in front of him with a cruel smirk and Kakashi forces his face back to impassiveness. 

Unimpressed, the man asks him: “What was your team delivering and where?”

Kakashi doesn’t reply, keeping his gaze locked somewhere in the middle distance. 

The man dislikes this answer, so he reaches for his face and digs his fingers into Kakashi’s jaw, nails cutting into his thin skin like razor blades and he starts to ask again but Kakashi-- **snaps**. He doesn’t have the wherewithal to gather his chakra and send a bolt of electricity pulsing under his skin to the man in front of him, to the two men holding his arms behind him until every individual joint feels like it may snap, but the man’s hand is in his face. 

He has the teeth of a wolf. 

Jerking his head away just enough to loosen the man’s grip does the trick. He lurches forward and sinks his teeth into the delicate bones and tendons of his captor’s hand, biting down until he hears the bones crunch and his teeth cut into the flesh and blood bursts in his mouth and makes him want to gag. The man he has bitten is screaming and the other three are yelling and trying to just yank the hand out of his mouth only shreds the flesh further. Gore drips onto the floor and down his chin and he twists and lashes out with a foot next, catching one of the men holding his shoulders wrenched back in the ankle and sending him flailing onto his ass. They can’t pry his mouth open but neither can he, he can’t make himself let go-- he’s going to tear off this man’s hand for having the audacity to touch him but-- 

It only takes one solid blow to his head to force him to go limp-- they slam his skull against the bars of his cell so hard that his ears ring and something in his head cracks and he goes limp, stunned for a moment. The man pulls his hand from his mouth with a litany of hissed curses, standing even as Kakashi stares balefully at him from where his face is now pressed against cold rock and peels his lips back into a bloodied grin, his canines a good half-inch longer and far sharper than any normal man’s. One of them kicks him in the ribs, hard, and then they descend on him, roughly tying his hands behind his back once more and then dragging him to his feet. He stumbles along between two of them on instinct as they drag him toward the steps, laughing deliriously while the muted colors of the cave and the people around him swirl in a nonsensical kaleidoscope, and then he lets his head fall and coughs some of the blood in the back of his throat onto the ground. 

Zabuza watches all of this impassively, but Kakashi can see his fingers twitching as they drag him past.


	4. Fangs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Great Fucking Plan, Hatake. Got any other brilliant ideas?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for injury and veiled threats and violence

He doesn’t scream.

Well, he’s _pretty sure_ he doesn’t scream. There’s blood roaring in his ears the whole time and it’s so loud that he can barely hear his interrogator speak. Kakashi doesn’t even curse at any of them, just watches them placidly as they do their best to work him over. Dousing him with cold water to rinse the worst of the fresh blood off does little to help him clear his head and he doubts it was intended to, it just leaves him shivering and soaked in the cool air of the caves. They break two of his fingers and hiss threats he cannot hear, try to change their approach to something psychological since the pain doesn’t seem to work, and then end up getting frustrated near the end. 

He’s so dizzy he’s sick with it, but there’s something simple in the satisfaction of noticing that his captor never looks him in the eye. He clings to that satisfaction even as the man’s gaze alights upon his mouth with sudden interest. “Heard you bit ol’ Tori hard enough that he’s set to lose half his hand,” he starts, crouching before him and smirking when Kakashi tilts his head to follow the movement. “He said you had fangs like a demon, three inches long. I doubt that, seeing as your mouth looks average-- pretty, but average.” 

He kind of just wishes the man would hurry up with the villainous dialogue and get to the _point_. 

“Maybe I’ll wire your pretty mouth shut-- no, **that’s** a shame.” Kakashi is too studied to flinch or speak or clench his jaw but his deliberate stillness makes the stranger with the too-large eyes laugh. “I’ll just… defang you.” 

It takes more than one person to hold his head still and pry his jaw open when they take a pair of pliers to the canine on the right side, pulling it out of his head with a series of sick crunches and a searing pain shooting up into his skull. When it’s over they pinch his nose shut and tilt his head back until he chokes and gags on the blood, and only then do they drag him back down the rough-hewn stone stairs and into the cells. Blood drips sluggishly from his mouth and his nose and he can’t quite find it in himself to clench his jaw shut because of the pain cutting through his face, and this time they shove him to the ground in the cell next to Zabuza instead of the one across from him. 

Nice of them to not throw him into the puddle of their comrade’s blood he’d left there, he thinks deliriously, before turning to Zabuza and blinking sluggishly at him. They slam the cell door and as the light fades he catches the unreadable expression on the other young man’s face and wonders how the hell he’s made it through a **month** of that shit. The wooden door slams, and the darkness descends upon them so suddenly Kakashi is almost convinced he’s dead. 

Zabuza remains silent, so he curls in on himself and tries to take stock of his injuries but he keeps losing his train of thought. It’s only after he hacks out a blood clot and a ragged series of coughs that his companion speaks: “You’re insane.”

Well, at least he doesn’t sound judgmental. 

Kakashi doesn’t answer for a while, focused on trying to slow his uneven breathing and getting the world to stop spinning in place-- he matches his breaths to Zabuza’s, because Zabuza is calm in the way that deep water is: he is placid and still until a creature bursts forth from his depths and tears you limb from limb and Kakashi doesn’t _know_ it but he _senses_ it. The feeling of danger clings and calls to the howling in himself and he. 

Probably shouldn’t be focusing on Zabuza when his brain is melting down like this. The man has too much. Too much mass, too much of that dangerous hint of death hanging about him. Kakashi can hear him, distantly, shifting closer to the bars that separate them and half of him wants to curl up in his shadow and lick his wounds and sleep until he’s healed and the other half wants to tear into him too. 

Time passes. Could be twenty minutes or ten seconds, he loses himself in it. He shivers from the cold and struggles into a sitting position and breathes through the new waves of dizziness and pain this sends through him, his inhales sounding disconcertingly damp and rattling somewhere in his chest. Zabuza shifts and inhales, and before he can say something else Kakashi cuts him off with a ragged, “it’s been said.”

A pause, before almost reluctantly Zabuza lets his curiosity get the better of him and he asks for clarification. “What’s been said?”

So it’s probably been on the longer end of time passing, he thinks. Keeping the slur out of his voice is impossible, and the unsteady drip of his blood from his mouth joins the dripping water in the far corner. “It’s been said that I’m insane. But usually people don’t sound like they have a crush on me when they make the observation.” 

The outraged silence is almost hilarious, and he wishes he could find it in himself to laugh. He pulls himself closer to the bars, leans right up against them until he can feel the damp tingling sensation of Zabuza’s chakra on his skin, and he can feel his breath fanning out over his shoulder. It’s only once he settles with a wounded noise that Zabuza finally speaks, sounding oddly subdued. “You’re pretty badly injured,” he says, mercifully ignoring the way Kakashi’s mouth had run away from him. He settles his broad shoulders against the bars and somehow leaning against Zabuza’s spine makes it easier to breathe than when he was leaning against the bars alone. 

He hums, noncommittal. “A few hours of being curled up on my side can fix anything. We’ll still get out.” The statement might have been confident if his voice didn’t tremble and slur just the faintest bit. The blood that slides down his chin is cold. His eyes slip closed. “One way or another.” Whether they have to butcher their way through the compound or die trying, or--

Team Ro _will_ find him. They’re too stubborn and stupid not to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i promise the next chapter is going to have the rescue team in it. swear to like, god.


	5. Path

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I abandoned my BOY!  
> \--Tenzo, probably

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> updates come when i feel like it, so. sorry  
> also lmao every time i go to write another chapter i read through the old shit and find a mistake so like, sorry about that shit too
> 
> once again huge thank you to noah for encouraging me and letting me bounce ideas off of you
> 
> and thank you to rob for making me fall in love with shisui. all my homies love shisui

They’d been running for almost four straight days by the time they make it to Takigakure. Minimal breaks, maybe four hours to sleep a night before taking off again. Kakashi had split off from them when they’d picked up a tail, and when Tenzo had tried to argue with him he’d cited a litany of reasons for him to do so-- starting with ‘fighting being a waste of time they can’t afford right now,’ which shifted to ‘I’m the second fastest person on the team behind Shisui,’ and then when pressed on why _Shisui_ wasn’t going to be the one leading them on a wild chase, he’d simply responded with something cold and logical and tactical that Tenzo took to mean as he was ‘bored and also team captain’. 

With that disagreement settled, he’d left Shisui in charge and sent them on their way with one of his summons, promising to either meet them in Taki or on the road. Tenzo had spent the next few hours fuming over the man’s ego in silence, incensed for no rational reason. The fact that Genma found his seething funny only irritated him more, but it had mostly faded by the time they made it to the city and delivered the package-- just before noon, the day after they’d split from one another. 

They wait in the city for a while, roosting in high places and trying to catch up on some of the rest they’d missed, eating real food from an actual restaurant and chattering absently. The late afternoon fades to night with no sign of Hatake so they take off again, following their path back to where they’d split with Uhei in the lead. She puts her nose to the ground and follows a trail at an easy lope-- not hard to follow a scent for someone so familiar, especially not when Kakashi had a tail of nearly a dozen other ninja that didn’t seem to care much for stealth. The trail leads in circles but slowly shifts north, and just as Tenzo thinks to himself that they’re never going to find him in this senseless wilderness, Uhei takes off at a dead run, yipping incomprehensibly. Shisui is right on her tail and the rest of them follow, Itachi in front of Tenzo and Genma bringing up the rear. 

He bursts into the clearing at a run, breaking from the trees and landing hard on the ground behind Shisui in a crouch and taking in the state of things with a sinking feeling in his gut. Uhei sits next to him wordlessly, a high keening sound erupting out of her throat, and Tenzo puts a hand between her shoulders carefully as he stares at the swathes of blood dried on the stone and grass and dirt before them. Shisui’s shoulders are a solid, taut line, and he points up and comments tightly: “They had wires in the trees-- must have caught him.”

And-- yeah, now that the other teen has pointed it out, he can see the scoring in the trees where the wires had been wrapped. A pretty extensive trap. A low whistle draws their attention next, to Genma standing off to the side and toeing at something. “Bodies,” he explains blankly. “Three of them, looks like lightning burns but no other wounds I can see. Been dead a little over twenty four hours.” 

Itachi shifts where he’s standing next to his cousin, and sounds almost as small as Tenzo has ever heard him when he observes: “there’s a lot of blood, Ibex.” 

“None of them are Hound,” comes the flat reply. 

Uhei shakes herself and puts her nose to the ground again, sniffing in circles until she picks up the trail. “Six of them carried him off this way,” she starts, her raspy voice sounding strained. “He was still bleeding, it won’t be too hard to follow.” 

Shisui nods at her and turns to the rest of them, and Tenzo stands with a grunt, suddenly restless. “We _are_ following, right?” he asks, interrupting whatever Shisui was going to say. The other boy only gives him an unreadable look through the holes of his lion mask for a moment, silent until Genma starts to shift closer on quiet feet. 

“Yeah, obviously,” he says, peering into the trees that cover their path forward. “Our odds aren’t bad, and… well, if he was alive when they dragged him off, they probably won’t kill him.” 

Why their pursuers might keep him alive goes unsaid, but it’s obvious. 

Though exhaustion pulls at their limbs, they press on-- the trail is blessedly straight, now, and they settle into a familiar Lion-Cat-Fox-Ibex formation with a gap in the middle where Kakashi might usually run. Uhei leads, careful not to lose sight of them despite her obvious impatience, and Tenzo decides that when they find the captain, after he is done throttling him, he’s going to tell him his newest ninken did admirably despite her youth. 

She stops in front of another body a few miles from their last point of interest, sniffing around it for a moment as they land in a semi-circle around the corpse. “He was carrying Ka-- Hound. There is blood all over his clothes.” 

Genma crouches and rolls the stiff body over with a grimace. “Throat’s cut down to the bone, looks like most of the blood on him is from that.” He rummages through his pockets next, businesslike, and Tenzo steps forward to kneel across from him. 

“Do you think Hound did it?” he asks, his voice quieter than he intends. 

The Ibex mask gives him a long, searching look but it’s Shisui that answers him, his cheer somewhat forced. “Not much of a reason for his allies to slit his throat, is there?” 

Shaking his head, Genma replies, “Not really, but they didn’t have any compunctions about stripping his body of anything useful. He doesn’t have any weapons or maps or anything.” A one shouldered shrug. “They left their dead behind, so they’re not exactly a tight-knit group, are they?” 

Itachi’s voice is quiet, but he pipes up, “We can use that--” and he quiets again at a nod from Shisui.

“We’ll know more after a little recon, but it’s not a bad start,” is his determination. “How long has this one been dead?” 

A beat of silence, and then Genma replies, “Less than twenty four hours, more than eighteen. We’re probably traveling faster than they were, even tracking them.” 

Uhei scratches her paw into the dirt impatiently, a reminder that she’s there and that they should get a move on, probably, and she meets their stares when they all turn to look at her evenly. She doesn’t say anything, but Shisui still nods and sighs, “Alright, we’ll figure out where they took him and then go from there. Cloak your chakra and keep quiet.” 

Five bright spots of light snuff themselves out, and then they carry on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can find me on my tumblr blog hatakayyy if you wanted, i post random shit there
> 
> for kakashi-centric posts only i have a rp blog, copycaat, where i post mostly gifs and headcanons and occasionally write there too
> 
> as far as plans for this fic go, i do have them! probably three or four more chapters for this story and then i'll end it and start a new one as a series. xoxo


	6. Ink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's so angry that the wash of memory isn't even debilitating-- it steadies something inside of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok big content warning for self-injury and suicidal thoughts in this particular chapter, on top of your regularly scheduled violence/gore/torture and brief nudity related to those things. head injury, panic attack. 
> 
> summary at the end if you'd like to skip. also, if you're really bad with cliffhangers i would wait to read this chapter until i post the next one or two of them. they'll be around soon enough, but my uncle died and the funeral is this weekend so i'm getting ready to deal with that.

It takes longer than he’d like to get his bearings once he struggles back to consciousness, the dizziness from blood and chakra loss and a concussion made all the worse by the darkness wrapped around him like a shroud. Curled on his side with his back to the bars of his cell, he takes a few even breaths and tries to take stock of himself past the general bone-deep ache. He’s freezing, probably again from the blood and chakra loss and shock as well as the general temperature of the stone he’s curled on. The pounding in his head seems to be focused on the right side where they'd cracked his skull against his cell bars, radiating out and down his neck, and strangely enough the sharpest part of the pain is where they’d pulled his tooth. Running his tongue over the hole left behind with a sigh, he slowly forces himself to sit up. 

Ribs twinge painfully and the scabbed over cuts pull and crack. His striking hand is functionally useless because of the stiffness in his broken fingers. Taking a deep breath tells him he doesn’t have a punctured lung, but he’d certainly inhaled some blood when they’d tried to drown him with it-- an infection waiting to happen. Kakashi stifles a cough into his fist and turns to the cell next to him. To do _something_ , to ask after Zabuza or figure out how long he’d been unconscious, but the cell is empty. There’s no even breathing, no shifting, no sardonic commentary, no sense of chakra rolling tumultuously under a placid surface. He holds his breath. For a second he thinks maybe the other man is dead, and he cracks open the sharingan in the darkness. 

Vague shapes take form even as the eye drives a spike of pain into his already aching skull, but there’s no body. Letting his eye slide shut with a sigh, he tries not to think about how out of it he had to be not to wake when they came in and dragged Zabuza away. He has no idea how long he’s been out, how long he’s been alone, or whether the man in the other cell will ever come back down. 

Something grim in him points out they’re either going to end up taking turns getting tortured, or they’re up there having fun with him one last time before they cut his throat and focus their attention on Kakashi. He pushes the thought away with a vaguely irritated grunt, and lets his head fall back against the stone wall behind him. 

He’s… angry. The world hasn’t stopped churning confusingly since he’d come back to himself, and nausea and hunger bubble in his gut interchangeably-- blood running down his throat doesn’t make for a solid meal, after all. He’s angry that he’s confused, angry that he’s hurt, angry that he was dumb enough to get caught and angry that he’s alone now. It isn’t logical, and Kakashi knows more than anyone how stupid and unproductive anger can make someone so he tries to swallow it. The lump in his throat makes him cough, and then there’s blood in his mouth again. 

Unfortunately, this gives him a bad idea. 

Kushina’s hair was the color of blood under the kitchen light and she’d always playfully despaired of his handwriting, bent over Minato’s rickety table as she tried to teach him seals. He’d never gotten enough practice as a child to make it naturally neat so he’d been far too slow with ink and a brush to ever think about using sealing in combat with the ease and skill that she and his sensei could, but she’d taught him the basics anyway. Kakashi can make an explosive seal in his sleep as long as he’s got the time, and he doesn’t have any ink but… He may as well put all this blood to use. 

The cavern is illuminated by a faint red glow once more as the sharingan spins to life lazily, and he bites back the wince at the now-familiar spike of pain with another long sigh. Shuffling forward takes a little too much effort and he has to lean against the bars once he makes it, chest heaving. Blowing the door off its hinges _now_ would just attract attention-- he’s in no shape to fight his way out of here and sneaking would no longer be an option, so.

Spitting blood into his currently useless right hand, he uses his left to paint delicate little lines on the ground until his mouth is dry, and then he digs his fingers into one of the cuts on his arms until it splits open again and blood wells up under his nails. He paints intricate little lines in red and watches them connect with chakra under the gaze of the sharingan. Explosive fire and lightning, directing the force out toward whoever would be opening the door, set to detonate when someone sets foot on the lines. It takes him what feels like forever, time stretching strangely when he has to try so hard to focus on his task. 

About halfway through, he thinks about how monumentally fucking dumb this is, and then figures he may as well keep going. If they bring Zabuza back and he’s halfway in one piece, taking out a few more of the guards might give them both a fighting chance at getting out of here-- and if not, this might be enough to force them to kill Kakashi too, proving he’s too dangerous to keep alive. 

Drawing the finishing touches, he lets his chakra seep into the lines with his breath held, and then watches the seal come to life under his fingertips with the sharingan. That done, he backs off slowly and lets the eye slip shut once more, curling in the corner of the cell once more with a weary sigh. Seals take up far less chakra than an actual jutsu, but he’s been running low for days now and it still seems to suck every last bit of life out of him until his skin is stretched too tightly over his bones, and something buzzes hotly under the surface. 

The blood has almost fully dried when he hears the sound of footsteps on the stairs behind the door, something dragging behind. He sits up as swiftly as he dares and presses himself into the corner, arms curled over his knees, and shades his eyes when the door cracks open and the cavern floods with light. The pale eyed man with the torch leads two others in, Zabuza held up by the arms between them. He seems to be walking-- or stumbling, at the very least-- under his own power but the look on his face is almost dazed. 

He still doesn’t have a shirt on. There is slightly faded black ink sunken into his skin from the base of his throat to the waistband of his pants, curling menacingly around ribs that stand out too far, and something sinks in Kakashi’s gut when he recognizes the base for the design. Zabuza’s chakra is locked away, looks like it has been for a while, and he’s not sure whether he’s more irritated with himself for not noticing or with Zabuza for not sharing that little tidbit with him initially. 

Bad news just gets worse, it seems: they have someone proficient in seals lurking around here somewhere. If they end up doing the same thing to him then he won’t be able to keep up the genjutsu that hides his eye, and his chances for escape plummet even further. Death will be his only option. Very carefully, he doesn’t look to where his own work is drying on the stone floor at the front of his own cell, keeping his eyes focused on the seal on Zabuza’s bared chest and trying to figure out how the hell to break it while he still can. 

Zabuza snarls when they shove him back into his cell, stumbling a little and then turning like he’s going to launch right back out at them, but they manage to slam the gate fast enough and he stills himself, fists clenched at his sides and trembling slightly. Bruises and tacky blood sit vividly on his skin-- they were probably beating him and healing him and beating him again, he thinks clinically, and when Zabuza turns his raging gaze to Kakashi he meets it evenly, still curled and unassuming in his corner as their captors jeer and the light fades as they leave the cavern again. 

Kakashi doesn’t let out a breath until they’re gone and they take the light with them-- they hadn’t noticed his own foray into sealing. They hadn’t even looked at him.

“Like what you saw?” Zabuza’s voice cracks out of him like a whip in the darkness, brittle and bitter and frosty. 

A thoughtful hum vibrates out of him before he can stop it, and he keeps his voice as mild as possible when he replies, “not really. You didn’t tell me they’d cut you off from your chakra.” 

A beat of silence, and then he can hear the scrape of stone when Zabuza shifts. “It’s not important,” he grumbles. “I can still fight. Besides, what did you think they were going to do? I would be out of here already if they let me keep it.” 

Kakashi concedes the point with a sigh and shuffles closer to the bars between them, trying not to wince too audibly. “What’s the damage,” he asks instead of arguing with the other man. 

“My left wrist is broken-- won’t be able to make a fist.” He can hear Zabuza shifting closer to him too, the slightly labored slant to his breathing. Kakashi does his best to keep his even in response. “Other than that, nothing I can’t ignore for a while.” Another pause, and then suspicion creeps into Zabuza’s tone. “Why?”

“What, I can’t be concerned about a fellow prisoner?” He lets amusement creep into his tone, and Zabuza just snorts at him in disbelief. “Fine, fine. I’ve been thinking, is all.” He ignores the other man’s sarcastic ‘uh oh’ with as much dignity as he can muster, tries to smother a cough, and continues, “We’re going to get out of here. I told you we would.” 

Zabuza doesn’t say anything out loud to that, just settles somewhere nearby with a huff, and then silence reigns between them for a long time after that. 

An hour or so passes, and Kakashi takes the time to listen to Zabuza’s quiet wheezing and doze. At one point Zabuza reaches through the bars and jostles his shoulder with a cranky, “tip your head forward, it’ll make it easier to breathe,” and Kakashi barely manages to keep himself from flinching at the sudden contact and doing something regrettable, like trying to break the man’s other arm. 

They come to get him next. 

Neither of them move from their corners as the footfalls approach, or when the door creaks open and the bright light floods the cavern once more. They sit perfectly still and watch with twin blank expressions as three of them file in once again, the pale eyed man carrying the torch and two others lingering warily behind. Very, very carefully, Kakashi steadies himself and doesn’t look at his work on the ground, willing them to keep their eyes on him. The pale eyed man leers at the two of them and asks, “getting cozy are we?” and laughs gratingly at their silence. 

He turns a key in the lock and Kakashi holds his breath. Zabuza just barely turns his face to watch him from the corner of his eye, but he doesn’t look away from their captors. The door creaks as it’s pulled open, and the pale eyed man steps forward.

The seal lights up brightly enough to blind him for a moment and then goes off with a crackle of electricity and a loud **boom** as it explodes out, hitting all three of them with bits of rock and scattered lightning. The pressure change and the noise are enough to almost send him to the ground shrieking from the pain in his head but he’s already on the move, muttering about miscalculating the force of it even as he drags himself to his feet and out into the dusty air, fumbling for one of their kunai and slitting all three of their throats before turning to Zabuza. 

Zabuza, on his feet, looking a little grey but watching him warily. There’s a shout from somewhere down the hall, and Kakashi figures-- well, two against fifteen is better than one. He pulls the key out of his own door and darts forward to try and unlock Zabuza’s cell just as someone hits the bottom of the stairs. He throws the kunai and hears it make contact, but he can’t steady his right hand enough to get the key in the lock before a heavy weight hits him in the side and sends him rolling. Some of his ribs give way; he feels them crack, but he can’t hear anything over the ringing in his ears and the pounding beat of his heart. 

Kakashi rolls to his feet and lashes out with a kick that misses his attacker’s head by a half inch, and there’s more shouting. The crackle of ozone and dust from the shattered stone tickles his lungs. Milliseconds pass in flashes counted down by the too-fast beat of his heart as he squares off with the man that tackled him initially-- a knife-hand strike to the throat that gets blocked, a kick to the knee that glances off just enough not to shred a tendon completely. If Kakashi takes any blows he can’t feel them, too busy fighting like a cornered dog to let himself think or feel anything at all. 

A wave of frigid water crashes through the cavern and hits him with enough force to knock him back into the wall and crush him there. His head cracks against the stone and his vision dims. 

He blinks back to awareness with a start that he can’t hide feeling like every nerve of his is on fire, head aching with what probably qualifies as his second severe concussion in as many days. The lights are so bright that his eyes water and when he tries to lift his palms to press them into the sockets he finds he’s strapped to a cold metal table. 

A tall, lanky man he hasn’t seen before wanders into the room and greets him with a slimy smile and a frosty look in his eyes. His arms are full of brushes and chakra ink, and Kakashi feels a spike of dread. _Stupid prophetic thoughts. _“My name is Ryoki,” he begins pleasantly. “Would you like to tell me yours?”__

__Kakashi doesn’t answer-- doesn’t even open his mouth, just follows the man’s movements with his eyes. This earns him a weary sigh, as if the man doesn’t _actually_ want to hurt him, and the glass bottles clatter quietly when he settles them on a table. He picks up a kunai and turns around, eyeing Kakashi dubiously as he approaches. The steel is cold when it settles against the tender skin of his throat and he thinks about leaning up into it and trying to get the man to kill him before he seals his chakra away, but. _ _

__The eye, the eye. It’s about Obito’s eye. He has to destroy it first but he can’t figure out how-- everything is too much too bright too confusing too painful, he can’t think straight. The knife slides through his undershirt like it’s silk, and Kakashi holds his breath as his captor pulls it away with a look of vague distaste, muttering something about the bruising and swelling making it hard to work._ _

__Kakashi can’t _breathe_ when he turns away, the air gets caught in his throat and he shivers against the prickling dread creeping up his spine. Bile and blood cling to his tongue and he can’t make himself focus on anything but the way his vision starts to grey out and the inked brush that settles a swirl against the base of his throat is cold like ice, sinking needles down to his bones._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kakashi wakes up alone, makes the exquisite decision to booby trap his cell with seals made out of his own blood, and discovers when they bring zabuza back that the other man's chakra is sealed away. this makes him panic just a little bit. 
> 
> he blows up three people and almost manages to kill a fourth before he's subdued again, and then they strip him and start to seal his chakra away too.


	7. Weapon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tenzo beats up a nine year old.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary says it all for the warnings on this chapter, folks. 
> 
> I am adding the tag "unreliable narrator" because kakashi, a narrator, is extremely concussed, and tenzo, a narrator, is stupid and traumatized as all fuck. Just something to keep in mind ig.

They find the entrance to the cave system within a few hours, lingering in the trees outside with their chakra masked as they watch the sun rise in the east. A singular guard loitering at the entrance smokes an entire pack of cigarettes before Shisui finally gives them the signal to regroup in a clearing further back. The branches don’t even rustle when they take off again, just another group of long shadows in the dawn light. Shisui, Itachi, Genma and Uhei all land lightly on the grass below, but Tenzo keeps himself hidden in the branches of the nearest tree-- he’s on lookout, and he can’t quite make himself leave the perceived safety of the canopy above his comrades. Below him, they bow their heads together.

And he almost, _almost_ doesn’t notice the rabbit. 

It’s a perfect place for them, after all, but it’s late spring and this one hasn’t even started to turn brown yet, pure white and either brave or stupid enough to come close to not only four humans but a nindog. Silently, he slips through the branches to get a closer look, keeping one eye on the rabbit and one on-- **there**. 

There’s a child in the bushes below, peering at the triad in the center of the clearing. Probably hoping the rabbit is enough to throw off the nindog at least, or explain away any rustling branches. Not bad, if their numbers were only the four in the clearing. 

Tenzo drops on them from directly above, pinning them with a knee on their back and his hands clenched around much smaller fists. The kid goes down without so much as a cry even though it had to hurt, and he leans over them to peer at their face through the eye-holes in his mask without saying a word. Their eyes are narrowed and their chin juts mulishly, even as a fresh cut bleeds sluggishly into the dirt.

“What were you doing?” he asks, trying to keep his tone flat. Tenzo guesses the kid is probably younger than Itachi and older than Sasuke, but they’re lean and hungry-looking and that throws him off anything more accurate. The kid just hisses at him, so he pulls one of their arms behind their back and twists it and asks again, “why are you watching us?”

By now, of course, he’s drawn the attention of the other four, and they dart closer to see what the noise is about. Genma has the audacity to take one look at them and _groan_ , like Tenzo is overreacting, and Shisui and Itachi both still completely. 

“Cat,” the Lion mask rumbles. “Let the child go.” 

He hopes his body language adequately conveys the incredulous look he’s aiming at Shisui right then-- a spy? When they’re trying to find Hatake? And he’s supposed to let them go?-- but when the other boy seems unmoved he plucks off the weapon pouch and the bundle of senbon and then lets the little thing up, shifting back and watching from a crouch as they scramble away from him and stand there with a stubborn set to their jaw and a hard look in their eyes. 

Tenzo knows the look. The child is a weapon just like he had been at that age, every inch of them hollowed out and sharpened and honed to be the most useful tool. _What are you doing so far from your handler,_ he finds himself wondering, even as Shisui crouches down in front of them and asks, “What’s your name?”

Shisui and Itachi and even Genma are practically radiating concern. The kid might not be able to read it, but to someone familiar with their body language it’s plain to see. Of course they’re concerned-- they’re older brothers. Or cousins at least, in Shisui’s case, but the family is close enough for it not to truly matter. The child’s gaze darts between all of them: four expressionless white masks wrapped in heavy cloaks and a sighthound with a grim look in her eyes, and then seemingly comes to a decision with a tiny nod. “Haku,” they begin, their voice strained. They clear their throat and start again: “Haku. I saw you staking out the entrance.”

Itachi tilts his head curiously even as Shisui and Genma exchange looks over the kid’s head, and Tenzo rolls his eyes. “Why were _you_ watching the entrance?” he asks when they remain quiet, and the child turns around to curl their lip at him in an imitation of a snarl before they smooth their expression again. 

“I’m looking for…” They pause, their gaze darting back towards the opening in the rock that houses the missing nin hideout, and Tenzo shuffles a little to get their attention again.

But it’s Itachi who speaks next, his thin voice unexpected and quiet under the rustling leaves in the breeze. “We’re looking for someone too,” he says, and Haku gives him a blank stare for a moment. Tenzo leans forward to ask who Haku is looking for again but a small gesture from Shisui stills him, and he leans back on his heels with a huff. 

Haku looks between all of them for a moment before folding their hands behind their back and straightening, like they’re giving a report in that soft, water country accent. “I saw them take someone inside two days ago with a mask like yours. You’re Konoha ANBU aren’t you? Will you help me if I help you?”

The child’s expression is sour, like they are under the impression that they just made a deal with the devil, and even as Shisui and Genma lean forward to presumably try and persuade them to sit this one out and let the big kids handle it, Tenzo shifts his weight and responds, “Deal. Who are you looking for?” 

He gets four identical dirty looks from his team and Uhei, but the kid turns bright, big eyes on him and smiles broadly. It’s a brittle thing, but the thin veneer of politeness is better than outright hostility. “My master, Zabuza. I have been watching them for almost a month, but I haven’t had an opportunity to go in. Their numbers are too great, and dying in the process of a rescue is a bit pointless.” 

Tenzo commends the kid on their self-restraint even as he mentally reserves a special place in hell for their so-called “master Zabuza”-- there’s no way he would have been smart enough to linger on the periphery and watch for weaknesses at that age if it had been Danzo in there. He’s barely patient enough to do it now, almost a decade later and looking to rescue Kakashi, who would be unspeakably mad at him if he got hurt or killed in a rescue and might actually drag him back from hell just to kick his ass. Danzo would have expected it of him. So Haku is disciplined at the very least, and cautious. He taps a clawed finger to the chin of his mask and tilts his head when it draws the kid’s attention to his face. “We’ll help if you help,” he starts, but--

“Absolutely _not_ ,” Genma declares, a hard edge to his voice. “What are you, eight?” he asks the kid, and then turns to Shisui and continues, “I’m not letting an eight year old run on a rescue effort with us. That’s insane.” 

Haku’s brows draw down and their fists clench, mouth falling open to object but they remain silent when Tenzo reaches out and taps the back of their hand. “I was doing way harder assignments at this age,” he starts, and then looks at Shisui. “So were _you_ , Lion. Fox is only a few years older, and he’s here too.” He doesn’t mention that Itachi’s brother is soft and feeble and probably even closer in age to Haku than Itachi himself is, because little Uchiha Sasuke is still very much a civilian in ways that they themselves were not allowed to be-- in ways that Haku was clearly also not allowed to be. He also doesn’t mention that Hatake tends to put Itachi on lighter duties, like being lookout. Tenzo waits for an argument for a moment, but the other three seem stiff and unwilling to rebuke him for now, so he just continues, “at the very least, you have intel we can use, don’t you? And if we ask you to stay outside you’re going to follow us in any way.”

Haku has the decency to look vaguely chagrined at the observation, and Shisui lets out a long, put-upon sigh. Tenzo signs, _we watch_ and _assign to fox_ , and then shrugs. It’s better to be able to keep an eye on the kid than have to account for them as a wild card, even if the other three want to be all stiff and weird about how young they are. Shisui gives him a thumbs down but nods anyway, his grimace visible in the slight hunch his shoulders have taken on. 

“Fine,” he begins, and Haku straightens imperceptibly. “If you share your observations with us and we come up with a decent plan, we’ll take you inside with us and help you find your… master.” 

Haku bows stiffly and when they straighten, there are tears gathering in the corners of their eyes like they’re relieved. Tenzo looks away, but he can’t close his ears to the wobble in the child’s voice when they reply, “I am grateful for the opportunity to help, ANBU-san.” 

He watches Genma run a hand down his mask silently, like he’s begging for the strength to deal with this clusterfuck, and very carefully does not think vindictively of child soldiers and the people that make them so, because he has a job to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is like halfway done because initially it was going to be paired with this but, as you can imagine, it got long. This fic is kind of getting away from me so I am now thinking maybe 9-11 chapters, and I may even post the next one today. I am having a normal one.


	8. Contact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That's a big fucking sword.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> murder!
> 
> two updates one day what WILL i get into next.

Haku’s intelligence is remarkably thorough-- they _have_ spent a month staking the place out, but even so it’s at least a jounin-level recon job. Only one entrance; foolish on the best of days to not have an escape route, but it does make it harder to both break in and escape. Shift changes every four hours, approximately twenty five missing-nin from Iwa and Kusa, most of them above chunin level. The occasional supply run. Bodies disposed of in shallow graves to the east, none of which had belonged to Haku’s Zabuza or their own illustrious leader, which they try not to breathe a sigh of relief about. 

Haku gives him a wary look when he returns their weapons after they share what they know, which he only answers with a shrug.

Not wanting to give away anything about his identity, the team has just taken to calling Kakashi ‘the asset’ within earshot of their littlest tag along. Haku seems to take this in stride, not caring much for the mission of a few strangers when their own is so much more important to them, and Tenzo can’t exactly blame them. Still, it feels like something unpleasant was crawling around under his skin whenever he looks at the kid, smiling politely and chatting with Itachi, who is almost entirely silent, and Shisui, who responds amicably enough. They wait restlessly until dusk, which is when a muffled boom reaches their ears. 

Itachi calmly lifts his head and cocks it to the side and murmurs, “that’s… the asset. The chakra signature is strange, though.” 

Shisui is already standing, and the rest of them follow suit quickly. “How do you mean ‘strange’?” he asks, even as he signs for them to prepare to scatter and infiltrate. Itachi just shakes his head-- he’s not sure, and he signs _too deep_. 

“Right,” Shisui continues, nodding. “Stick to the plan, but Ibex and Cat will split off from Uhei and I in order to cover more ground.. Let’s go see if the guards are distracted.” 

They take off toward the entrance, where they spot two guards whispering to each other and peering back into the cavern behind them like they’re still thinking about abandoning their post to check out the noise from a few minutes ago. Shisui drops down on them and cuts both of their throats faster than Tenzo can blink, and he crouches there in the entrance for a moment like a wraith as he watches for movement further inside before turning and beckoning the rest of them closer. Blood clings to the edges of his cloak. 

They leave Itachi and Haku at the entrance, ostensibly to keep anyone from escaping with their prisoners. Tenzo is pretty sure the silent agreement between the older half of the team is something like this: no one will survive trying to slip past them towards the entrance in the first place. Shisui and Genma are probably hoping the youngest members of their ragtag alliance won’t have to kill or fight at all, and Tenzo finds that he’s just indescribably angry and it’s doing wonders in motivating him to ignore his fatigue so he can bring this place down on more than a few heads. 

Shisui and Uhei split off from them once they reach what seems to be the main cavern, turning into the closest hallway to the right as he and Genma go left. The greater cavern is empty with a series of open doorways leading deeper into the rock and they’re flying blind on schematics but it seems simple enough to start at the front and work their way back-- things might get complicated if the tunnels themselves have more branches. 

The tunnel that he and Genma find themselves clearing first is blessedly shallow, leading to a room empty of people but full of weapons and armor in varying states of cleanliness. Some of it is even familiar-- Genma lifts Kakashi’s tanto and harness like it’s made of glass, or like he’s afraid maybe the captain will swoop out of the rafters and cuff him for touching his gear. 

No captain appears from the shadows, and Genma tucks the blade away in his cloak and continues picking over the piles of dusty junk to look for his armor. Tenzo turns away and starts when he spots a figure looming in the shadows, but upon stepping closer he can see it’s just Kakashi’s cloak, tossed carelessly over something. Pulling the heavy fabric away reveals a massive sword, taller than he is and looking a little worse for wear: rust lingers on the edges from the damp air of the cave, and some sinister feeling washes over his arms and down his spine. The blade is familiar. 

He puts it together with a low sigh even as he hears Genma curse right behind him. Kubikiribocho, or at least an extremely convincing fake. The former seems far more likely, considering Haku’s ‘master’ was named Zabuza. 

“Momochi,” he murmurs, and it almost falls out of him like a curse. Of _course_ their squad leader would go and get himself captured by people keeping _The Demon of the Mist_ as a prisoner as well-- he really did have the worst kind of luck. Genma makes a noise he can’t interpret, something between a strangled laugh and a groan, and it turns into a question as Tenzo reaches out and grips the handle of the blade. Pulling it out of the shadows is an effort as the thing weighs more than half of what he does, and his arm wobbles a little bit when he holds it out straight in front of him to test it. Tenzo doesn’t answer right away, instead taking the harness for it and strapping it on under his cloak, and then storing the sword there and turning to his partner with his hands on his hips. 

Genma tilts his head in another silent question, and Tenzo simply signs _bargaining chip_. A pause, and then Genma nods once, and Tenzo continues, _everything?_ Another nod, and they slink back down the hallway and into the main chamber, still empty. Shisui is nowhere to be seen, but the general lack of alarm and cacophonous noise is a better sign of his safety than anything else, so they dart down the next hallway on light feet. There’s a bend in this one and around the corner they can hear voices and shuffling: someone is gossiping about one of their prisoners detonating a seal in the cells, and Tenzo takes the time to turn to Genma and very, very deliberately roll his eyes. Genma gives him a single shake of his head in return, even with amusement clear in the line of his shoulders, and holds up four fingers. 

He points to himself. _High,_ he signs, and then points to Tenzo and signs _low_. Tenzo nods, and after a silent count of three they step out around the corner. Five ninja in varying states of dress are lingering in what looks like a bunk room, and even as Genma throws a handful of senbon Tenzo is forming the signs for earth flow spears-- four of them drop to the ground and right into the sharp points that spell their doom, and the last one drops dead with two poisoned needles stuck deep in his throat. One of the four twitches and lets out a gurgle and then stills, and Tenzo tilts his head up just in time to catch the tail end of Genma’s sigh, and he smothers a laugh when the man signs _overkill_ to him. 

Genma slides into the room silently to pick over the bodies for his senbon and then they move on to the next hallway-- it’s a set of uneven stairs leading down, and even in the low light Tenzo spots the shine of fresh blood. Pointing at it earns him a grim nod, and they creep further and further down the stairs. There’s a door at the bottom that’s half open, flickering torchlight and a few jeers making it up to them. Genma settles a hand on his shoulder and slips down to the bottom of the stairs, and then peeks around the edge of the door. Within a half-second, senbon fly from his hand and Tenzo hears two thuds, and the torchlight flickers when it falls to the ground but it doesn’t go out. 

There’s a scraping sound, and then a gravelly voice calls out: “Haku?” 

Tenzo creeps down the stairs behind Genma and together they push the door open and walk into the room. Two bodies are sprawled just in front of one of the cells-- it holds a flickering, nebulous shadow that unfolds and steps into the light as a man. Too lean, covered in blood and bruises, but unmistakably Momochi Zabuza. Genma and Tenzo exchange a look even as Momochi scoffs at them, and Tenzo steps forward to look over the cell next to him. The floor is completely blown out, chunks of rock scattered across the floor; there are three more bodies piled in the corner, riddled with holes and throats slashed. Tenzo whistles to get Genma’s attention and then points at them, and Genma replies softly, “well, that’s definitely the asset.” 

Momochi laughs, a grating thing, and observes too-casually, “Oh, it really _is_ a Konoha thing to work together-- I thought Kakashi was bullshitting me.” Tenzo’s head whips around, and he takes a step toward the man before Genma settles a hand on his arm and shakes his head once. Not worth it. 

He regrets grabbing the sword now-- he wants nothing more to leave this asshole in his cage to rot. Genma must read his body language, because before he can say anything the other man just mutters, “ _you’re_ the one that promised the kid we’d help.” 

_What, like my word as a ninja means anything?_ he wants to ask sarcastically, but he’s distracted by Momochi leaning against the bars with poorly feigned disinterest as he asks, “The kid? Haku? Haku’s alive?” 

Tenzo barely manages to keep himself from spitting something cutting, instead fumbling to undo the harness keeping the sword strapped under his cloak and letting it fall to the ground with a heavy clatter. Zabuza’s eyes widen and then narrow suspiciously, like he’s not sure what the game is, but Tenzo doesn’t offer any empty platitudes, his voice cracking out of him like a whip when he says, “you can have it back if you don’t gut us or ours with it when we let you out.” 

Zabuza eyes him, tilts his head, and asks “you _are_ here as a rescue party for Kakashi, aren’t you?” instead of an empty platitude. At Genma’s hesitant nod he shakes his head with a sigh. “Fine. I know where they took him, if they haven’t killed him for doing _that_ yet.” The statement is punctuated by a gesture toward the still-settling dust and ozone smell of the blown-out cell, and Tenzo can’t keep the wince out of his posture. 

He and Genma glance at each other, shrug, and turn to hunt for the key as one. Genma finds it on one of the corpses with his senbon sticking out of them, and he plucks those out too-- Tenzo lifts up the massive sword with a grunt, and watches pensively as Zabuza steps out of the cell and turns to stare at him. He holds the sword out and the other man steps up to take it with his teeth bared in a grin that looks ghastly in the torchlight, and Tenzo only looks back at him blankly through the eyeholes of the mask and says politely, “lead the way then, Momochi-san.” 

That earns him a huff, and Momochi straps the sword onto his back easily, despite the sealing ink and the massive bruising on his arms and chest, and he sets off into the dark. With one final glance at each other, Genma and Tenzo slip along behind him out of the hallway and across the cavern-- they’re skipping clearing out maybe two hallways, but Tenzo figures priority is getting Kakashi out of there and he’s not sure if he wants to see just how well the Demon of the Mist can still fight, so he doesn’t comment and neither does Genma. 

This time a set of stairs leads them up, up, to another heavy door with far brighter lighting peeking out from the crack underneath than anything else they’ve seen so far. Tenzo steps forward and pushes it open just a crack-- the kunai aimed at his face is deflected easily enough, and he catches enough of the scene to say “Lion, it’s us.” Kakashi is half-slumped against a metal table with Shisui at his elbow and Uhei pressed to his knee, whining softly. Shisui’s bloodied cloak is wrapped loosely around his hunched figure, which makes it all the more obvious when the younger boy’s shoulders slump with something like relief. 

“Oh good. Ibex, Cat--” The forced cheer in Shisui's tone evaporates when he turns to them fully and spots Zabuza lurking in the doorway behind them, and he asks with some barely contained, unidentifiable emotion: “Oh? And who is this?” 

The way he says it makes it clear that he knows _exactly_ who Momochi Zabuza is-- all of them do, the man is near the top of the Bingo book for Mist nin and rivals Kakashi himself in reputation, and Tenzo is standing with his back to him like they’re old pals. He can only sigh in response. 

Kakashi straightens with a groan and then a wet-sounding cough, keeping his face turned half-away from them. And then because he is a major asshole, his voice is butter-mild when he starts, “Oh yeah. I forgot to mention--”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter is gonna be a jump back to kakashi pov where we see him get rescued by shisui but this is your reassurance that he's okay enough to mouth off


	9. Tremble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shisui ex Machina

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> appreciate your patience with me!
> 
> warnings for this chapter are, and i cannot emphasis this enough, attempted suicide to escape captivity and inappropriate touching on top of your regularly scheduled gore and whatnot. 
> 
> skip the first 4 paragraphs if you need to to but it's brought up again very vaguely later on. be safe out there!

The grey fades from his vision after a few tightly controlled, shivery breaths. The man-- **Ryoki** he’d called himself, but Kakashi certainly doesn’t feel very pleased-- hums to himself absently as he trails the brush carefully down Kakashi’s sternum and into a starburst pattern around his navel. Nausea hits him so fiercely he isn’t sure whether it starts in his gut or his throat or chest or in his hands and feet, but he swallows back bile and thinks of one final monumentally bad plan. 

His chakra is only a lone flickering candle, but even a candle is enough to start a house fire. 

Kakashi shifts and inhales with a shuddering gasp, thinking about how much a chakra seal looks so much like an explosive seal, really, just a few more lines here and there and when Ryoki glances up at his face to see if he’s about to talk, Kakashi snaps the jaws of the new genjutsu on him, layering it over the first. It’s a subtle, simple thing that takes almost no effort at all, but his hands and shoulders shake uselessly anyway once it’s done. Ryoki paints a few more lines onto his chest and then stands there staring down at him, brush hovering just off to the side. Ink splashes onto his arm, and Kakashi holds his breath. 

But he just turns away, murmuring something under his breath that Kakashi can’t hear over the sudden pounding of blood in his ears. He swallows down the blood and bile in his throat again and allows himself to think about the fact that when Ryoki activates the seal, Kakashi is going to die. He tries to think about Rin, or Kushina, or Minato. Obito. He tries to think about his father, and how the man laughed when Kakashi pulled his hair to get his attention. He tries to remember them and he tries to convince himself he will see them again but inside of him there is only a vast, hungry blackness and he stands at the edge of it and stares down and all he can think is that he’s angry and hurting and he hopes the blast is big enough to bring the whole fucking place down. 

Ryoki carefully rinses his brush and packs his supplies away as he waits for the ink to dry, and Kakashi forces himself to breathe evenly and turn his gaze to the ceiling and just think about nothing at all. The static comes back into his skull with enough ferocity that he almost doesn’t notice the man lingering over him again-- his attention is jerked back to reality because he’s touching Kakashi’s jaw, and then his throat, tracing his fingers lightly down the dried ink line along his sternum in a facsimile of tenderness; the hairs on Kakashi’s arms stand up and he lets his eyes slip closed as he feels the man start to gather his chakra to activate the seal and--

There’s the slick sound of steel sliding into flesh and between bone, and the sudden weight falling against his torso pushes the air out of his lungs in a bitten off scream. His eyes snap open and for a few moments he doesn’t understand. There’s a familiar presence pulling the corpse off of him and then a different weight on his chest but this one is fur and claws and pointy elbows and there’s a high pitched keening but he’s not sure if it’s coming from him or not but he can’t catch his breath so--

“Kakashi,” the voice is familiar, soothing even though there’s an undertone of panic. The lion mask that pops into his view belongs to Shisui and he _knows_ that, and the boy puts a hand on his forehead and repeats, “Kakashi, can you hear me?” 

He can’t make himself reply with anything more than a rough cough and then a gasp when the dog-- Uhei, that’s Uhei-- digs her elbow into his rib cage. She’s pressing her entire body as flat to his chest as she can and pushing her cold nose against his collarbone and whining, wordless and soft. He coughs again and then winces when Shisui gently coaxes the ninken down to the floor, and breathes raggedly while Shisui undoes his restraints. _Can_ he talk? It feels like if he tries to force himself to speak he might scream or choke on blood again, but he manages to sit up and settle his bare feet on the floor when the teen coaxes him into doing so, feeling empty and strange like a puppet with too few strings. 

Shisui mercifully doesn’t comment on the trembling in his hands, instead just giving the ink on his chest a troubled look and then throwing his cloak around Kakashi’s shoulders. “I’m alright,” he starts, and the boy flinches but he can’t tell if it’s because he didn’t expect him to speak or because his voice is hoarse and it breaks on the last syllable, or if it’s just because it’s so obviously a fucking lie. “I’m alright,” like repeating it will make it more real but at least his voice doesn’t waver so terribly this time, and he clears his throat and continues, “Everyone else?”

The silence is judgmental instead of hesitant, which loosens something in his shoulders minutely and gives him the strength to stand. Shisui grips his bicep to steady him when he lists to the right, and Uhei is back, pressing herself to his knees despite the fact that both of them are now covered in blood. He curls a fist in the cloak at his throat to wrap it around himself a little tighter and keep it there, shivering a little in the cold air of the clinical room, and with his free hand he reaches down and rubs her ears. Shisui watches him carefully and asks, “Are you going to be okay to wa--”

He cuts himself off as the door cracks open, a kunai flying from his fingertips as he whirls so swiftly it makes Kakashi’s head spin, and he hears it get deflected and another familiar voice murmur, “Lion, it’s us.” 

“Oh, good. Ibex, Cat--” Shisui cuts himself off and his defensive posture is back, so wearily Kakashi lifts his head and squints into the dark doorway. “And who’s this?” the teen asks the group, and Kakashi must be worse off than he thought because he can’t quite make Zabuza out until he steps fully into the room followed by Genma, his assessing gaze flickering almost boredly over the room until it locks on Kakashi, swaying as he is in front of the bed. 

Zabuza, and that massive, distinctive sword. Zabuza, with the sharp teeth. 

He almost, _almost_ lets out a hysterical bark of laughter at the fact that his fellow prisoner is Momochi Zabuza, one of the seven swordsmen and so-called Demon of the Mist. Even funnier is the tense line of Tenzo’s shoulders as he stands with his back fully exposed to the other man and the downright twitchy way Genma steps along behind the both of them. Kakashi thinks he would like to go to sleep, then he watches the way Zabuza tenses under the scrutiny and forces himself to straighten, clears his throat and rasps, “Oh yeah, I forgot to mention--”

“You _forgot_?” Shisui turns back to him incredulously, raises a hand to his mask like he’s thinking about pinching his nose, and lets it drop again with a sigh. Kakashi watches this with a vaguely detached air, caught between shock from his injuries and something like relief at seeing his comrades and knowing they’re going to get out of here mostly intact, and then he turns to Zabuza again and lifts an eyebrow. The other man shrugs one shoulder and lets his arm relax from where it was tensing like he was considering grabbing the hilt of his sword. Good, no bisecting Tenzo-- Kakashi can work with that. 

He hums, noncommittal, and then absently complains, “are we going to stand here and bitch all day?” which starts Tenzo on a rant under his breath as he stomps closer, pauses, and then drags Kakashi’s arm over his shoulder. “Ow, not so rough kittycat--” he manages to gasp, but instead of getting riled by the nickname Tenzo just gives him a long, blank look with the mask, which he takes to mean as the kid is pretty worried about him.

Shisui steps away and doesn’t do him the disservice of asking if he can walk again, he just makes a sharp gesture at Genma meant to indicate he should keep an eye on Momochi, and then says, “I’ll take point. Momochi-san, if you would follow behind Cat and the Asset, Ibex will bring up the rear.” 

Zabuza gives Shisui a long look and then turns to Kakashi, expression shifting to something thoughtful. Kakashi shifts his grip on the cloak to make sure it covers most of his torso, and then raises a brow back at him. Zabuza’s gaze flicks to his left eye, narrows, and then he turns around with a shrug and a gesture that presumably means ‘lead away’. Kakashi gives Uhei one last pet and then murmurs ‘scout’, and she reluctantly leaves his side to slip into the hallway. 

The four of them follow her into the dim stairway, soundless except for the faint shuffle when Kakashi fails to fully lift his dragging feet, and disaster almost strikes when Kakashi loses his footing and nearly drags Tenzo down the stairs with him, but two strong hands fist in the back of their cloaks before they can pitch headfirst toward the bottom and stay there until they have their balance back. Tenzo’s shoulders are tighter than rock, and with the arm slung around them Kakashi silently pats his arm as best he can. 

_There, there. Don’t cause a scene because a big bad missing nin just kept us from breaking our faces open and blowing our cover._

Tenzo just sighs in response, a quiet thing that’s almost inaudible under his mask. Kakashi feels like his head injury and chakra exhaustion are making him take all of this rather philosophically, and if he thought he could manage it he might crane his neck around to send Zabuza a look. 

Momochi. Momochi Zabuza, his fellow prisoner. Ha. 

The main cavern is empty, but Uhei is pointing down one of the hallways at the end. When he stumbles into view she wags her tail twice, and Kakashi holds two fingers up. Shisui nods, so he whistles sharply once and she takes off like a rocket down the hall, barking. She returns a few moments later with two half-dressed ninja on her heels, and one meets his end at the edge of Shisui’s kunai as he flashes towards them before they can even register that they aren’t alone, the other gets his throat ripped out by Uhei rounding on him with a snarl. Silence reigns for a moment as the greyhound trots closer. 

“Good job,” he says to the room at large, though if pressed he would insist it was just positive reinforcement for his newest ninken. “Is everyone else in here dead?” His voice echoes strangely in the cavern and he winces a little. 

Uhei shakes herself and then sits primly at his side, starting: “I don’t hear or smell anyone except for--” Zabuza tenses slightly when the dog starts talking; Kakashi mentally marks him as someone not overly familiar with either summons or ninken, and then he tenses too when Itachi’s voice rings out from the entrance.

“There’s nobody.” 

Kakashi leans around Tenzo to get a glimpse of the kid and grimaces a bit when he sees he's hauling a corpse twice his size behind him. Tenzo snorts in his ear and mutters, “Great, let’s blow this popsicle stand,” and without prompting Genma slides up and takes his place while Tenzo slips off to stand next to Shisui. 

As their procession passes their youngest member, Kakashi reaches out and stiffly touches two fingers to the kid’s shoulder and Genma asks, “What’s the deal with the stiff?” Itachi’s answer is a simple gesture toward another body he’d clearly just dragged inside the entrance, so Kakashi assumes he was hiding them and says nothing when Itachi sticks close to his other side. 

The light outside is that of the setting sun and it’s somehow brighter and far more beautiful than the clinical room he’d just been dragged out of-- two or so days underground and it feels like he’d forgotten what the sky looks like. Zabuza had spent a month down there. He turns to see how the other man is faring and blinks placidly at the sight of him staring at the horizon like a starving man, ashen but lit up in shades of red and orange. 

Zabuza turns his heavy gaze to him, but before anyone says anything there’s a child standing before the man, staring up at him like he hung the moon. The kid’s breath sounds punched out of him, and choked up when they murmur, “Zabuza--” 

“Haku,” Zabuza begins, settling a hand in their hair before something in his face twists and he draws away again. Kakashi knows that look and he knows he’s about to tell the kid off for something-- he’ll spend the next few months convincing himself he isn’t relieved when Tenzo interrupts the tender moment by clasping his hands together in a final seal and collapsing the entire cavern system behind them. 

Kakashi tries not to feel sick from the sight and sound of falling rock, and then in order to nip any brewing arguments in the bud, he decides to start one of his own by lazily asking the group at large: “ _Why_ is there a five year old here?”

The child rounds on him. He keeps his expression perfectly neutral, and silently commends the kid for not flinching from the gore and sharingan combo. They open their mouth to retort something and Zabuza puts a hand on their shoulder and steps forward, putting himself between the group of ANBU and what probably isn’t his biological child. The kid grips Zabuza’s pants at the hip and everyone lets that little gesture pass without comment. “This is Haku. They’re nine,” he says, flat and a little defensive. 

Tenzo shifts and cocks his head to the side, and Kakashi feels the urge to ruffle his hair and tell him not to take shit so personally. Instead he just closes his left eye with a long sigh.

Haku, still tucked half behind Zabuza’s leg, peeks out and narrows their eyes at him and asks, “Is this the asshat?”

Zabuza freezes. Genma guffaws loudly and then claps a hand over his mouth, aborting a bend at the waist that nearly sends Kakashi sprawling to the ground. Despite the new spike of pain in his ribs and his skull, Kakashi manages to give him a flat look and says, “Is _that_ what you were calling me?” The mock-betrayal in his tone is somewhat drowned out by the amusement.

Itachi, bless him, shakes his head and very seriously addresses Haku. “The _asset_ ,” he stresses, and Kakashi can tell he’s amused too but he manages to keep it out of his voice. “It means ‘a useful or valuable thing, person, or quality.’”

Haku nods gravely as Zabuza’s mouth flattens, eyes wary, and Shisui urges them deeper into the forest to avoid further comments or barbs. 

Kakashi checks out completely, and he’d feel more shame for that if he had noticed that fact at all before they settle for camp next to a river and propped him carefully against a tree. Genma snaps his fingers in Kakashi’s face and he blinks at his mask for a second, before lifting his head up and glancing around. The sun has set and the moon is low-- probably around nine at night. They’ve risked a small fire, probably to keep him from going into total shock and dying, and Tenzo seems to be prodding distastefully at a rabbit and a squirrel corpse that both still look half raw. Shisui and Itachi are nowhere to be seen, most likely scouting. Haku is tittering behind their hand at Tenzo’s show of dismay. 

Zabuza seems to be alternating between watching Haku like a hawk and glancing over at him and Genma. Kakashi looks away before his brain tries to interpret the expression on his face. 

Genma tilts his head slightly, and then sighs warily when Kakashi says nothing. “I’m going to check you over,” he starts, settling a careful hand on Kakashi’s wrist and then pulling away again. “Gotta make sure you’re not going to die in your sleep, yeah?”

Pulling himself up to sit under his own power, he grimaces and touches the ink on his chest. The ink… that forms the explosive seal. He glances at Genma and then shakes his head. “Not yet,” and when Genma starts and tenses like he’s going to start yelling, Kakashi nips that tirade in the bud by pulling the cloak open a little and saying, “Will you he-” and he chokes on the word ‘help’, because of course he does. “Will you help me wash this off first? Then I promise I’ll be the perfect patient for your cute little doctor routine.” 

Genma freezes as he spots the seal, ducks his head. Running a hand through his hair he mutters something about what an insufferable jackass Kakashi is, blah blah blah, and then helps haul him to his feet and drags him to the water’s edge, where he slips him a sliver of soap and crouches a few feet away, probably to make sure Kakashi doesn’t pass out and fall in face first and drown. 

With a sigh, Kakashi shrugs out of Shisui’s bloodied cloak and fights the shiver from the cool night air. The water from the river is even more frigid, enough so that he can’t help but gasp when he splashes it on himself, but he grits his teeth and scrubs with the sliver of soap and his nails and the damp edge of the cloak until his skin is prickling and red and ink free. The gashes on his arms reopen, and without a word Genma steps forward with a soft green flow. 

He’s no medic, but he can at least stop the bleeding. 

Kakashi coughs again into his fist and with a sigh Genma steps back and pulls out a scroll, releasing a new uniform shirt and pants combo from it, and he wordlessly helps Kakashi struggle into the damn things. The fabric is difficult to manage with damp skin and stiff joints, and Kakashi mumbles something about it being ‘undignified’, to which Genma’s retort is only, “at least you’re conscious this time.” 

Which is a fair point. Hurtful, but fair. 

Once he’s dressed, something restless in his gut settles as he pulls the fabric mask back over the lower half of his face, and Genma solemnly hands him his tanto and cloak before once more tucking himself under Kakashi’s arm and pulling him closer to the fire again. 

Genma settles him on the ground and then slaps Tenzo’s hands away from the spits that their dinner is roasting away on, and Kakashi leans over to dump his own cloak over Haku’s head while clutching Shisui’s to his chest. Zabuza gives him a sharp look, so he says, “I’ll take a look at the seal on your chakra tomorrow.” Tenzo makes a vaguely dissatisfied noise and he blithely continues, “so now you have a reason not to kill us in our sleep, yeah?” just to hear him choke. He turns his attention back to Haku, who is now squinting at him and holding the oversized cloak to their chest. “Use that as a blanket, kid,” and then he turns away at their hesitant nod. 

Uhei bleeds out of the underbrush and nuzzles his cheek; he pats her on the head in response. She’s not covered in blood anymore and she’s still a little damp, so he’s guessing she took a dip in the river as well. The blood in his head starts to rush again and it leaves him nauseous and confused so he just lays down on his side with a sigh. She curls up around his head with her nose tucked against his chin. “I’m going to sleep, now,” Kakashi announces unnecessarily, slightly muffled by her fur. “Wake me up if someone dies.” 

Tenzo snorts, and Kakashi is out before he gets to hear the quiet, “what if it’s you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one more chapter for this fic, and then i will be starting a new arc. right now i have two more things planned but who knows what could happen.
> 
> also i have like.... a million little drabble/coda fics for team ro but i am not sure whether i should condense them in a multichapter fic or if i should continue putting them as standalones in the blood royal series. let me know if you feel strongly either way ig


	10. Spiral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jokes about collecting a bounty go over about as well as you would expect. 
> 
> Or maybe not: it kind of goes better than Kakashi expects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> last chapter of this arc haha helll yeah! ignore that i am posting this only twenty minutes before the deadline i set for myself haha.  
> if there are typos, i will catch them eventually. you know how it is.
> 
> no violence, only bad jokes

He jerks back into what could generously be considered awareness with his head full of cotton. 

Cotton, no-- nails, more like. Barbed wire. His eye hurts and his head hurts and his mouth hurts, stabbing and aching and radiating pains making him tense and try to take a breath. It gets caught in his throat and a series of wet coughs roll out of him tasting like blood. His ribs hurt. Blearily Kakashi lifts his head and lifts a hand to his mouth and squints against the sunlight.

It’s mid-morning. The fire is low but still warm. Uhei had moved to curl up at his back in the night and she’d been replaced with another folded cloak-- Tenzo’s by the smell of it, something piney and undeniably teenage boy. He pushes himself up on his elbow and Uhei slips out from under the cloak laid over his chest and stretches with a soft whine, pulling the fabric from his shoulders. A dismayed noise slips out of him at the cool air creeping up his spine, but he doggedly continues trying to process his surroundings. 

Two strangers-- Haku and Zabuza. They’re sitting a few feet away, Haku with their back straight and their expression alert while Zabuza seems to be dozing lightly. Itachi is getting water from the river it seems, Shisui and Genma are roaming around in the trees; hunting or checking the perimeter, it’s hard to say. Tenzo is crouched in front of him expectantly, watching him glance around. The mask is blank, but without his cloak it’s easier to read his body language than normal: his bare shoulders are stiff and uncertain, and the tail end of his braid is messy where it hangs over his shoulder like he’d been fidgeting with it a little too often. Kakashi raises his eyebrow at him. 

He lifts his hands in response, one holding a canteen and the other a wrapped ration bar. Kakashi fights the grimace off his face and struggles to sit up fully before accepting both of them in his left hand with a hoarse, “thanks.” His voice wakes Zabuza, but Kakashi doesn’t look at him, instead continuing to stare at Tenzo as the teen shifts uncomfortably in front of him. Normally Kakashi might have the patience to wait him out, but pain and exhaustion make him irritable so he murmurs, “Well?”

Tenzo freezes, and then rocks forward on the balls of his feet before landing flat on the heel again, still crouched with his hands clasped in front of his knees. “Ibex said--” 

Kakashi rolls his eyes and drops the canteen and the ration bar in his lap so he can reach out with his left hand to shove half-heartedly at his shoulder. Tenzo lets the move force him to fall back on his ass, and then scoots towards him again until their knees touch. “I’m fine,” and Tenzo’s shoulders hunch. With a sigh he amends, “I’ll be fine when we get back.” 

He lifts his right hand so they can both stare at it-- the pinkie and ring finger are a bit lumpy, black and blue all the way down to his wrist and so stiff that he can’t bend any of his other fingers without wincing. “Probably going to have to go to a medic for this one,” Kakashi observes sardonically, biting back a victorious smile when Tenzo just snorts in response. “Here, help me open this--”

Tenzo grabs the canteen out of his lap and unscrews the cap for him, holding it out until he takes it in his left and then getting to work on the ration bar’s wrapper. Kakashi pulls his mask down and watches absently as Tenzo struggles to grip the plastic with his gloves. The water is cold and it hurts his mouth when he finally tips the canteen back, but he swishes a couple of times and leans off to the side to spit bloodied water before he finally graduates to small swallows-- his mouth and throat are parched but the last thing he wants to do is make himself sick. Tenzo makes a victorious noise and the ration bar is settled on Kakashi’s knee carefully. He stands, and Kakashi squints up at him as he says, “I’m going to get Ibex so he can look you over again, don’t move.” 

Kakashi raises a brow at him and replies sardonically, “‘Don’t move’? Where would I go--” He’s interrupted by Tenzo flinching as if struck, and then the teen steps forward and crouches in front of him again. The Cat mask is impassive but the hand that reaches out like he’s going to touch Kakashi’s face is hesitant, and it freezes in the air between them. 

“Oh no,” he says, his voice almost mournful. “Your _teeth_.” 

It takes him a moment to respond. Before he realizes it the canteen is shielding his face from view, and he’s settling his hand on Tenzo’s wrist to make him drop his arm back to his side. He swallows hard and runs his tongue over his line of straight and razor sharp teeth and the hole on the right that his canine left behind. The teeth of his mother, interrupted. “Just one tooth,” he corrects absently, trying and failing to sound amused. He sounds like nothing at all-- just a deep well with cold and still and dark water waiting at the bottom, and he looks over to the river as a signal to drop it, which earns him an acquiescing sigh from his friend. “Do you have any soldier pills?” is his best attempt to change the subject.

The tilt to Tenzo’s head is reproachful, and Kakashi slips his mask back over his nose before he drops the canteen back into his lap. “You shouldn’t eat them on an empty stomach,” he starts, but falters easily enough when Kakashi shakes his head. 

“A little nausea won’t kill me,” is his curt response. “The rations will just fuck up my mouth. The… crumbs or whatever. I’ll be fine.” 

Tenzo sighs and rummages in his pouch, shakes one out of a bottle, then carefully places it in Kakashi’s waiting palm. The older boy blinks his thanks and Tenzo tucks the bottle away once more before he grabs the untouched ration bar and takes to the trees. Kakashi stares down at the pill in miserable silence for a moment before he remembers he has an audience, gaze flickering to the pair sitting close to one another. Haku is prodding at what might have once been a rabbit haunch and then tossing the bone into the fading fire, and Zabuza is watching _him_. 

Unease curls in his throat again, but he gives the other man a cheeky wave. This earns him a raised brow, to which he can only shrug: yeah, he barely has any idea what’s going on either. The desired effect is achieved--Zabuza looks away with a heavy eye roll, and Kakashi takes the opportunity to pop the pill dry without an audience. 

The rush of energy that runs through his veins after a moment almost hurts, and it leaves him feeling lightheaded enough that he doesn’t feel all that bad letting himself slouch and rest his forehead in his hand, taking measured breaths in through his nose in an effort to combat the sudden churning in his stomach. Genma lands lightly in front of him a few minutes later, his hand already glowing a soft green. 

“Kakashi,” he starts, pausing when he only gets a grunt in response and then continuing, “I’m going to make sure you’re not stroking out or bleeding internally-- you were well enough last night but I want to make sure.” 

Without lifting his head he nods in response, fighting a shiver when the older man’s warm hand settles at the nape of his neck. It slides slowly down to settle between his shoulder blades and then draws away, and Kakashi lifts his head to blink wearily at Genma, who tips his chin at him. 

“From what I can tell, your chakra coils are pretty burned out and you’re running a low-grade fever, so--” he grimaces and picks through his pack for a moment. “I’m not a medic, but a fever reducer and antibiotics probably won’t kill you until we get you to an actual hospital.” At Kakashi’s groan, he only holds the pills out more insistently until Kakashi picks them out of his hand and dry swallows those as well under his watchful gaze. “I worked on your concussion the best I could, but if you take another blow to the head right now-- and I can’t stress this enough-- you will probably die. Okay?” 

The intensity that had been building in Genma’s shoulders loosens at his nod, and a sigh rolls out from behind the mask. Kakashi turns and carefully folds Tenzo and Shisui’s cloaks before holding them out to Genma, who hesitates for a moment before warily taking them with a question in his posture. “Ah, well-- Tell Lion and Cat I appreciate the loan,” Genma accepts them fully with a snort, and Kakashi continues, “And tell Lion I’m sorry about all the blood.” 

Genma just sighs, “like it wasn’t already soaked when you got it,” and then takes off for the trees before he has to listen to whatever stupid joke Kakashi has lined up next. Which is fine. Great job, team, leaving your injured captain with one of the seven swordsmen and his homicidal little kid. Fine. 

Kakashi forces himself to stand, holding perfectly still for a moment as he watches spots dance in his vision and willing himself not to sway in place. He thinks he manages this well enough, because when his eye can focus again Zabuza only seems mildly bemused instead of outright, and Haku’s nose is only a little scrunched when they peer up at him from under their bangs. Their gaze sharpens as he steps closer, and then he shifts his own gaze to the dark ink settled into Zabuza’s skin. He comes to a stop before the pair, doing his best to look bored and not quite sure how far he’s missing the mark, and Zabuza murmurs, “Haku, why don’t you go see if you can find something to make some tea,” without looking away from Kakashi’s face. He thinks maybe there’s a challenge in his gaze, but he’s a little too tired to tell. 

Haku looks between the pair of them for a moment, obvious unwillingness to separate from Zabuza and desire to obey him at war on their face, before they nod without a word and slip away into the woods. Kakashi all but crashes to his knees at his side, descent barely controlled. 

Zabuza’s eyebrows shoot up on his forehead, but Kakashi is squinting at the lines on his chest thoughtfully. A beat of silence, and then the missing nin asks, “do you even know what you’re doing?” 

There’s almost a growl in his tone, and Kakashi has to bite back his own wash of amusement when he mildly asks, “what would you do if I said no?” 

A scoff, and then he settles again-- even leaning forward when Kakashi reaches out to wordlessly tug on his right arm to ask him to lean a little closer. After a long moment where Zabuza seemingly holds his breath, Kakashi nods to himself and prods at one of the lines trailing up along the inside of his ribs. “These on either side here are a lock, of sorts. It’s a simple one, though I obviously don’t have the key-- this is an even seal, so if I lay an odd one over it to destabilize it… ah.” 

He glances up, a little chagrined to find he’d been rambling, and Zabuza’s brows are once again raised. A beat of silence, and then the man asks, “Are you some kind of fuuinjutsu expert?” 

Kakashi thinks about Kushina and how patiently she’d been able to explain the answer to every question he’d had at her kitchen table with scrolls and ink and brushes haphazardly strewn about them, and he thinks about Minato who’d stolen the life from a great, raging chakra monster, and he thinks about how they would have had this seal broken the moment they’d laid eyes on it. He swallows a sigh and lightly replies, “No. I just read a lot.” 

It rings empty, but Zabuza mercifully drops the inquisition and shrugs his shoulders. “Whatever. Keep explaining, I want to know what you’re doing,” is what he finally settles on, and Kakashi gives him a reluctant nod before leaning close again to peer at a line on his collarbone. 

“Laying an odd seal over an even one destablizes the whole thing-- it should allow your chakra to start leaking out and eating away at the edges of it instantaneously, and then from there I can work on peeling the whole thing off.” He leans away again and puts his left hand to his chin, his right tucked almost childishly against his chest. “It won’t hurt that much, either, though it might be a bit of a shock-- you’ve had this on for a while.” 

He reaches out and pats Zabuza’s pec absently. You know, like any normal person would do. 

“So you’re going to have buildup, because this isn’t a seal on your chakra production, just your ability to use and expel it.” He draws his hand away and makes a small gesture with it, out toward the rest of camp. “If you give me a minute, I can make some blood-ink and get started now.” 

Zabuza’s expression is mildly incredulous, but Kakashi isn’t sure whether it’s because he’s offering to just… unseal his chakra, easy as that, when the rest of his team is far enough away and he’s almost too injured to walk under his own power; or if perhaps it’s something else. Very carefully he takes any thoughts he has on that subject and puts them in a small box and shelves them somewhere in his own head, and then he gives him a beatific eye-smile when he finally nods. 

Standing once more, he steadies himself on Zabuza’s shoulder before slipping off to the remnants of his salvaged gear-- it only takes a moment to find an inkwell and a brush stored in a scroll, and then when he looks up Zabuza is suddenly settling next to him lotus style with a groan. He turns to look at where Zabuza had been seated and then back at him with a raised brow, and the other man only scowls at him for a moment before muttering, “watching you limp back and forth was getting kind of pathetic.” 

Kakashi doesn’t comment on the other man’s injuries, because he is capable of tact, and if Zabuza wants to rattle his busted ribs then he’s allowed to do that. 

He just turns back to the supplies. A small cut to the side of his palm, and then he lets the blood drip sluggishly into the ink for a moment as he roots around for bandages. Once he has them in hand, Zabuza leans forward with furrowed brows and takes the gauze, and then without a word begins to wrap the wound himself. Kakashi wipes the surprise off his face and forces himself to hold perfectly still, hardly even breathing, and very carefully does not think about the light touch on his palm or how weirdly warm Zabuza’s hands are or the way his chakra buzzes underneath his skin or the way Zabuza’s lingers deeply under his own like a _threat_. 

Once that job is done he cheekily flexes his fingers and winks (blinks) at him, which makes him snort at least. Kakashi doesn’t thank him either, he just puts the cap on the ink and swirls it gently, putting just the right touch of chakra into it to make it viable, and then he pulls out the brush. “Okay,” he says, aiming for reassurance and missing by a mile, “Hold still.” 

Zabuza tenses but obeys, and without further fanfare Kakashi sets the brush to his skin, carefully tracing out an odd numbered seal that branches out over the older one-- starting at his diaphragm and working up, and then down, and then to either side. He works diligently, focused on his task as he inks a seal meant to nullify and absorb the old one and aid chakra flow onto Zabuza’s chest. After a half hour or so of painstakingly slow movements he leans away, setting the brush to the side and trying to shake the persistent cramp out of his hand. 

“Well,” he begins skeptically, “That probably won’t kill you.”

Zabuza gives him an unreadable look, and instead of freaking out over that statement and ruining all of Kakashi’s hard work by smearing the ink, he just takes an even breath and asks, “did you break your seal the same way?” 

Briefly, Kakashi thinks about spending four hours with the equivalent of an explosive tag painted on his chest and how close he’d come to-- well. The way Ryoki had loomed over him and touched his throat. The wide eyed looks he’d gotten from Shisui and Genma. And then he tucks those things away too, sighing. “Mine never got activated, I just washed it off in the river,” a pause, and then he continues: “I should have warned you it would take a while to paint.”

It’s not an apology, just an acknowledgement of his breach in etiquette. Zabuza gives him a strange look nonetheless, and then shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. I want it gone,” he says, before sitting up straight. “So, what, you activate it and see what happens?” 

Kakashi starts to shake his head, but then shrugs a shoulder because, yeah, kind of. “I’ll let it start to deteriorate on its own before I pull it off. It should only take a few seconds, maybe a minute at most. Are you ready?” 

Zabuza nods, grimly, and Kakashi doesn’t remind him that the sudden flow of chakra might be jarring-- he just reaches out and touches two fingers to the ink, just between his collarbones, and sparks it to life with a flicker of his own chakra. Zabuza gasps, jerks, and then steadies himself, sweat already beading on his forehead as he sucks down a few breaths. Kakashi focuses on the feel of the old seal, watches it start to flicker and disintegrate, and when he feels the abrasive rush of Zabuza’s chakra start to flow through the gaps like great falls of seawater, he grabs onto the seal and _pulls_. His own seal sinks its hooks in and digs, and with a great wrenching feeling he drags the entire thing free from its anchors. 

He’d thought the trickles of Zabuza’s chakra had been abrasive and vicious like the sea. That had nothing on the massive, deadly-feeling wave that comes crashing out of him once it’s freed. It’s seething and deep and cold and heavy, almost knocking him back-- as it is he barely manages to keep from gagging, and the sudden tension in his spine from the killing intent nearly forces his vision into total darkness and something instinctive in him wants to reach out and sink his teeth into flesh and claw at him until his insides are on the outside but. 

He blinks heavily once. Twice. His vision clears, and his finger is still pressed lightly to Zabuza’s chest. Zabuza looks chakra-drunk, flushed with it and almost giddy as he stares at his hands with something that might be mistaken for wonder. Kakashi draws his hand away and clears his throat, watching as the man’s expression slowly shutters back to something a little closer to neutral, and says, “I know it’s tempting, but don’t try any big jutsu until you’re used to it again. You could hurt someone.” 

The man’s lip curls, but he nods, and then between one shaky breath and the next Itachi is standing a half inch from Kakashi’s shoulder, bristling subtly under the cloak. Zabuza starts, and Kakashi reaches up with his right hand and drags Itachi back by the collar until the boy stands fully behind him again, snarling under his breath at the spike of pain it sends through the broken bones in his hand. “We’re fine,” he snaps, a little harsher than he intends to, and Itachi’s mask communicates nothing but his stiff posture is indicative enough of his alarm. “We’re fine,” he repeats, a little softer this time, and he painfully untangles his fingers from the fabric of the cloak and prods gently at his shoulder. Zabuza almost manages a sneer, but it’s easy to see he’s still too busy reveling in the fact that he has his chakra back to be a real bastard about anything. “Go tell the others we’re fine too,” is what Kakashi finally settles on, just as all three of them land in the clearing with a flash.

Which, well. They’ve had worse timing. 

Shisui takes a step forward, and with a roll of his eyes that’s so severe it nearly knocks him on his ass, Kakashi stands-- if he has to lean on Itachi’s shoulder a little bit, that’s between the two of them. And, you know, everyone else that witnesses it. Tenzo makes a sound that might be a groan, but once he’s on his feet the tension dispels again for the most part. 

Zabuza’s miasmic chakra still sinks deep into the edges of his senses, heavy enough that it’s almost a physical presence. Genma crosses his arms almost defensively, and silence reigns. 

“Great,” Kakashi finally starts, taking a step back so he can watch the four members of his team stand around bristling like wet cats while Zabuza slowly gets to his feet himself and looks unreasonably smug. Seriously, Kakashi is the one that did all the work-- Zabuza just sat there and took it. 

Ha. 

But once he speaks, he has everyone’s attention, so he shrugs. “We should go our separate ways, then. The sooner we make it back to our respective homes, the better.” Zabuza slants him a look, but Shisui actually pulls his gaze fully from the swordsman and gives him an incredulous glance. 

“You do realize that even with his chakra back, Momochi is injured,” he starts, slowly like he’s talking to a child. Kakashi wrinkles his nose and narrows his eye at him, so he hurries to continue, “and he’s traveling with a nine year old. It’s practically a death sentence for them to travel alone around here.” 

Kakashi raises his brow again at Zabuza, who hovers on the edge of looking offended and strangely amused, and then turns back to Shisui. Genma tips his head, and without a word Tenzo and Itachi disappear into the trees with him; probably unwilling to be involved in an argument between the captain and the lieutenant. Tilting his head, Kakashi signs _Shimura_ \-- team Ro’s code for him: a closed fist in front of the right eye, and then continues _kill them. Us_. Out loud, he drawls, “well, hauling an injured and infamous missing nin and a nine year old back to the village is kind of a death sentence too, isn’t it?” 

Zabuza snorts and crosses his arms, muttering, “Don’t I get a say in whether or not we even want to travel with you?” 

Cheerfully, Kakashi turns to him and replies, “Nope!”

Shisui shakes his head at him and turns to Zabuza, bowing a little bit. “My apologies, Momochi-san. I’ve been thinking-- perhaps it would be best if you…” and here, he hesitates, which is when Kakashi turns his undivided attention on him as well. “If you came back with us, to the village. You’re wandering around as a hunted man with a child, and. Well.” He trails off, and Kakashi fights the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. 

Zabuza’s face is unreadable, and Kakashi isn’t sure whether that means he’s considering it or if he’s thinking about inflicting some terrible violence on the kid, so he makes a show of sighing loudly and lazily observes, “Lion, if you want to collect his bounty there are _far_ less suspicious ways of going about it.” 

Shisui jolts and splutters for a moment, waving his hands in the air before him like he can physically force Kakashi’s joke back into his mouth. “That is **not** \--” he starts, before he’s cut off by a loud snort from Zabuza.

“It’s fine, kid,” he says. “He’s just an asshole.” 

Shisui tips his head like he’s thinking about arguing on ‘kid’, and Kakashi allows the other man to besmirch his honor because he’s right. 

“Alright, well--” he finally starts again, after it seems like there’s no further asinine commentary to be made. “Please at least travel with us to the land of Grass. We can separate at the border, even, but. We can’t in good conscience leave you stranded out here while you’re injured.” 

Kakashi purses his lips and lets his gaze fall back on Zabuza and wills him to understand that they’re offering _because _of the kid. Zabuza watches him back evenly, and shrugs a shoulder. “To the land of Grass, then,” he agrees, and Shisui sighs with relief that isn’t subtle. “And as for following you all the way back to Konoha--” he pauses, crosses his arms, and furrows his brows at the river behind them. “It doesn’t sound like the _worst_ idea.” __

__“It’s up there, though,” Kakashi observes flatly._ _

__Zabuza laughs. “Yeah, maybe so.”_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ended here because this way you can go back and watch the wave arc and think about how fuckin funny it is that kakashi and zabuza fight to the death even when they know each other. 
> 
> by funny i do mean tragic. 
> 
> next fic in the series will be a standalone, and then another multichapter fic, and then another one after that. in the meantime i'll keep posting the ro han drabbles because this au is already fucking self indulgent as hell so. do with that as you will. anyway, thanks for your support <3 love you guys


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